Building an understanding of how winning products emerge when open and proprietary products coexist: Evidence from the RepRap community

Advances in digital manufacturing technologies have not only altered R&D processes for new product development (NPD), but they have also opened new possibilities for user innovators to engage in traditionally closed innovation processes. However, incorporating external sources of user innovation—through design challenges or crowdsourcing, for example—can introduce competing logics into exploratory innovation processes. Using the lens of complexity, we conduct an ethnographic study of the competing logics at work in the NPD processes of a corporate makerspace launched by a large firm in the consumer appliances industry. The makerspace was founded with a hybrid logic, intended to combine the community logic of makers with the corporate logic of the parent organization. We analyze the conflicts that arose between logics and how the hybrid logic evolved through four iterations of the NPD process. We identify how managing multiple logics led to structural and identity changes, and we explain how two mechanisms—structural bridging and stakeholder identity linking—enabled the makerspace to innovate with a hybrid logic and overcome the constraints of a dominant logic on the NPD process. The results offer insights into dynamic organizational responses to complexity, how new business initiatives can be structured to act as exploratory units for corporate parents, and how corporate makerspaces can help incorporate external sources of innovation.

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hybrid innovation logics: Exploratory product development with users in a corporate makerspace

Browder

Crider

Garrett

2023

“…Likewise, the seminal RepRap Open‐Source Hardware project that gave rise to MakerBot, Ultimaker, and dozens of other startups (de Bruijn, 2010; Greul et al, 2018; Hu & Sun, 2022; Stanko, 2020; Stanko & Allen, 2022; West & Kuk, 2016) has proved unable to move beyond (the relatively unsophisticated) plastic filament printing technology. Limited consumer adoption has dashed widespread hopes firms might leverage 3D printing user communities (de Jong & de Bruijn, 2013; Rayna et al, 2015; Rayna & Striukova, 2016; Rindfleisch et al, 2017).…”

Section: Assessing Predictions Of 3d Printing‐enabled Transformationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet, beside occasional business model upgrades, it is hard to find cases of radical business model reconfiguration through 3D printing. The RepRap Open‐Source Hardware project has enabled shifts between open and closed business models (Stanko, 2020; West & Kuk, 2016), as well as business models blending these two modes (Appleyard & Chesbrough, 2017; Rayna et al, 2023). Even in this case, only startups have carried out bold business model innovation (Greul et al, 2018), with incumbent perpetuating essentially the same business model.…”

Section: Assessing Predictions Of 3d Printing‐enabled Transformationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Where digital meets physical innovation: Reverse salients and the unrealized dreams of3Dprinting

Rayna

West

2023

For more than three decades, enthusiasts have predicted that direct manufacturing enabled by 3D printing would inevitably supplant traditional manufacturing methods. Alas, for nearly as long, these utopian predictions have failed to materialize. One reason is a flawed assumption that hybrid digital-physical systems such as 3D printing would advance as rapidly as purely digital innovations enabled by Moore's law. Instead, like other examples of cyber-physical systems (CPSs), technological progress in 3D printing faces inherent limitations that are emblematic of the differences between CPSs and purely digital innovations. As with any complex CPS, improved performance of a 3D printing system has been limited by that of its key components-the sort of limiting problem previously defined as a reverse salient. Unlike previously studied technologies, several reverse salients for 3D printing performance have neither resolved nor signs of resolving soon.Here we analyze these key reverse salients, and show how they have hampered the suitability of 3D printing for direct manufacturing and other predicted applications. We contrast predicted versus actual capabilities for 3D printing-enabled transformation in six key areas: product innovation, mass customization, home fabrication, distributed manufacturing, supply chain optimization and business model innovation. From this, we suggest opportunities for greater realism in future 3D printing research, as well as broader implications for our understanding of CPSs and reverse salients.

“…Rapid prototyping is a popular AM application because it allows new entrants to experiment with novel product designs and accelerate the innovation process (Hopp et al, 2018; Rindfleisch et al, 2017). Using online platforms, consumers, and companies share novel AM enabled designs (Stanko, 2016), while corporate makerspaces (Browder et al, 2023; Stanko, 2020) allow existing designs to be remixed as three‐dimensional models (Friesike et al, 2019; Stanko, 2016). Companies using AM in this manner are said to be harnessing “innovation as data,” where digital CADs are downloaded and a small volume of bespoke items are printed layer‐by‐layer (Rindfleisch et al, 2017).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transitioning additive manufacturing from rapid prototyping to high‐volume production: A case study of complex final products

Roscoe

Cousins

Handfield

2023

This paper seeks answers to the question: what are the key factors that enable the scaling of additive manufacturing (AM) from rapid prototyping to highvolume production? Using a longitudinal case study, we collected primary and secondary data to trace the AM scaling journey of AeroCo, a highly innovative aerospace firm. Based on the case findings, we position AM as a whole system technology because it can print components for a wide range of subsystems in a complex final product. Scaling AM requires a significant realignment of existing, and often deeply entrenched, new technology, and product development processes. To achieve this alignment, AeroCo formed institutional alliances with the UK government and universities to establish university technology centers, which facilitated early stage ideation and "catapult" centers, which enabled high-volume testing in factory-like facilities. The case reveals how multiple functions needed to integrate, including research and development, product design, and future programs, to ensure that design changes cascaded from one subsystem to another, and that new technologies were linked to a future product to create a final product pull. These findings inform a managerial framework for additive manufacturing scaling that is generalizable to other digital technologies used in the design and production of complex final products, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, smart factories, and cyber physical production systems. Our framework contributes to innovation thought and practice by explaining how new product development processes and organizational structures change under the effect of digital technologies.